SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- When you go to the mall, your license plate number could be captured by the newest license plate reader in the region.

Destiny USA began using the surveillance technology on a trial basis May 22, said Sara Wallace, the mall's marketing director. The mall, which gets 25 million visitors a year, installed a license plate reading camera on one of its security vehicles.

License plate readers are commonplace in law enforcement. Onondaga County has a database of 5.2 million records that mostly detail the travels of law-abiding citizens.

The scanners -- fast action cameras -- can capture pictures of more than 100 license plates per minute.

The plate scans taken at Destiny USA are sent to a third-party company which turns them into data about where visitors are coming from, Wallace said. That information could help the mall better target its marketing efforts, she said.

It's not new for Destiny USA to collect license plate data. Wallace said the company had been collecting license plate numbers, by hand, from time to time to determine where shoppers were coming from.

Destiny USA gets no personal information from the data. The company only receives information on what zip codes shoppers are coming from, Wallace said.

"For clarity sake, this material is not sold or distributed with tenants or anyone
else outside of Destiny USA management," Wallace said. The data can, though, be shared for security and law enforcement purposes, she said.